On the Edge: Money, Life and Loneliness on the Fringe of the PGA Tour

Turning into his 11th hole during the second round of the McGladrey Classic, a PGA Tour Fall Series event held every October, Ben Martin glances up at an electronic scoreboard looming over the tee box. He has to be pleased. After a dramatic 86-foot eagle putt five holes earlier and a birdie on the last hole, he is six under par for the tournament, tied for eighth place in a field of 132 players.

It’s vital for Ben to play well here. After competing in 23 tournaments since January 2011, the 24-year-old rookie has made $284,500 in prize money, putting him at 173rd on the PGA Tour’s “money list.” It’s not nearly good enough.

Only the top 125 players, as ranked by tournament winnings, get to keep their magic “tour card,” which allows them to enter any of the PGA Tour’s official events. This is the ­preeminent men’s golf tour in the U.S.—and argu­ably the world. Running from January through October, the PGA Tour will host 45 tournaments in 2012, with purses running into the millions of dollars. In 2009 Tiger Woods earned $10.5 million in prize money on the tour, and a tour card also guarantees rich endorsement deals and access to lucrative corporate outings. For a promising rookie golfer like Ben, those off-the-course deals are worth a minimum of $200,000 a year.

Short of an outright victory either at the McGladrey or at next week’s tournament in Orlando, Ben doesn’t have a prayer of making the top 125 this season. But with a pair of strong finishes he stands a decent chance of cracking the top 150, and under the tour’s byzantine rules players ranked between 126 and 150 retain their cards (out of about 235 touring pros) and can compete in events when needed to fill out the field. The ­alternative is bleak: a return to the grueling PGA Tour Qualifying Tournament, better known as Q-school, in a last-ditch effort to retain his card and then, most likely, demotion to the ­Nationwide Tour, the PGA Tour’s minor league.

The difference between making it back onto the tour and being demoted to the Nationwide might only be a couple of dozen golf shots over the course of a season, but the financial repercussions are huge. Prize money on the Nationwide is only about 10% of the tour’s. Last year’s top moneymaker on the PGA Tour, Luke Donald, made $6.7 million on the golf course; the top player on the Nationwide Tour made $414,000. Most Nationwide events are not televised, and endorsement deals are one-third as big, if not smaller. If playing on the PGA Tour is like having your product stocked at Wal-Mart, competing on the Nationwide is like selling through a regional supermarket chain.

The business analogy is perfectly appropriate. “You are an athlete, but you are also kind of an entrepreneur,” says Ben, who stands an inch under 6 feet tall and shares the preppy, cookie-cutter good looks of many pro golfers. “Most other sports you get drafted; it’s up to someone else to decide your future. You sign a contract, and if you don’t have a good rookie year you are still out there playing next year. Golf is different. You have to perform, man. It’s all on your own ticket.”

Golfers are like entrepreneurs in other respects. Failing significant family wealth, young players are forced to find financial backers, typically in return for a share of their future winnings. And unless they have professional representation, they must also book their own travel, do their own accounting (Ben paid taxes in six states and Canada last year), negotiate endorsement deals and hire—and fire—caddies and coaches.

It costs a minimum of $110,000 to compete for a year on the PGA Tour—$75,000 on the Nationwide—and there are no guaranteed paydays. Each week the worst-scoring half of the field is eliminated after the second day of the four-day tournament and earns nothing. But players who fail to make the cut are still responsible for their travel expenses and must pay their caddies. (Golfers strike individual deals with caddies, but in general caddies make $1,200 a week, plus a percentage of any winnings: 5% for making the cut, 7% for a top-ten finish and 10% for a victory. Nationwide caddies get the same percentages but are paid $300 less a week.)

Ben’s tour card—worth hundreds of thousands of dollars—is on the line at the McGladrey Classic. Photo: Brad DeCecco

YOUNG GOLFERS JUST OUT of college typically don’t even get the opportunity to play on the Nationwide Tour, much less the PGA Tour. Usually they start on one of the “mini tours,” privately owned affairs that pay prize money out of entry fees rather than sponsor cash. When Ben turned pro in the summer of 2010, he was planning on playing the eGolf Professional Tour and the Hooters Pro Golf Tour (now the National Golf Association Pro Golf Tour) for at least a year or two. Both had a significant number of events scheduled within driving distance of his home in Greenville, S.C.

The mini tours aren’t cheap to play in, despite there being no caddies to pay. Each tour costs $1,500 to join, and there is an entry fee—usually around $1,200—for the individual tournaments. Ben’s father, Jim, estimated it would cost at least $50,000 for his son to play on them for a year.

Jim set about raising the money in two ways. First he asked 100 friends of the family to contribute $300 toward Ben’s living expenses. This money was not going to be spent on golf nor was it construed as an investment. It was just a $30,000 gift to pay his son’s rent and keep him fed while he chased the dream.

Then Jim drew up a list of 17 well-off friends he was going to ask to invest $3,000 annually for three years, and he began crafting his pitch. Arrangements vary widely, but investors in young players might expect to get 90% of their golfer’s winnings until they are fully paid off for their upfront costs, then 50% of the prize money until a certain dollar figure—say, $400,000—is reached and then 10% of any further winnings. Jim chose not to structure the deal that way.

“It was a very personalized thing,” Jim remembers. “These were guys from my local country club. I knew they had a personal interest in Ben, and I knew that they had the financial resources. I sat down and over a six-month period wrote the whole proposal, constantly revising it, until I felt that it was something that those guys would be interested in doing. I never even used the word ‘investment’ or ‘investor,’” he clarifies. “It was sponsor. We are going to help sponsor Ben and put him out there. They knew that if Ben didn’t make a dime, they weren’t getting a dime back. No one was expecting to get a dime back.”

Photo: Brad DeCecco

BEN IS A GOLFING PRODIGY by any standard. When he was just 3 his dad began taking him on short walks of three or four holes, with the toddler proudly toting his set of Fisher-Price clubs. “I never forced him. He just wanted to come,” Jim recalls. By 7, Ben was playing in tournaments.

Throughout his career Ben has demonstrated a pattern of gradual but steady improvement. He failed to make his high school team as a freshman, but by his senior year he was a star player. He was recruited by Clemson University, a golf powerhouse, but offered just a $500 “books” scholarship. Ben initially rated himself as the 12th-best player on the 13-man team. By the time graduation rolled around five years later—he spent a year benched as a redshirt freshman—he was an All-American and had qualified for three majors as an amateur: the 2009 U.S. Open, the 2010 Masters and the 2010 U.S. Open.

“There have been times when I have missed five cuts in a row on the tour,” says Ben. “But then I look back at high school and college, when I was getting beaten by everyone, and realize that I’ve done this before. Now I’ve got to keep getting better as a professional golfer.”

His amateur record, which also featured a second-place finish at the 2009 U.S. Amateur Championship, attracted an unusually high level of interest in a player who seemed destined, at least ­initially, to play on the mini tours. Ben turned pro the day after he failed to make the cut at the 2010 U.S. Open and that very same day signed an endorsement deal with Titleist, which his father had negotiated for him.

It was a sweet deal for an untested pro. Although neither the company nor Ben will confirm the details, it’s an open secret that he got the standard agreement the company offers young hotshots, with plenty of upside potential: $10,000 a year plus free equipment for playing on the mini tours, $50,000 for competing on the Nationwide and a minimum of $150,000 for a year on the PGA Tour. Like all such endorsement deals, there are significant sweeteners based on ­television time, top-ten finishes and ­victories. In return he agreed to carry a Titleist bag, wear its hat and use its clubs, balls, shoes and gloves.

A month later, in July 2010, he was signed by Crown Sports Management, a boutique agency situated not far from the site of the McGladrey Classic on St. Simons Island, Ga. The agency represents just 21 players, mostly top-tier competitors like Jonathan Byrd, Davis Love III, Lucas Glover, Brandt Snedeker and David Duval. They agreed to rep Ben in return for 20% of his off-the-course earnings.

“We are only going to want to sign guys who are going to be elite PGA Tour players. That’s where the money is. That’s where our clientele is,” says Ben’s agent, Jeremy Elliott. “They have to fit into our little fraternity as well. We end up talking to these guys as much as we do to our families.”

Ben did well his first year, playing in eight Hooters and eGolf tournaments between July and October 2010. He finished in the money in all but two events and won outright in his second professional tournament. That $35,000 victory meant that his dad would never have to reach out to those investors he had so carefully lined up. Overall his prize money on the mini tours totaled $49,000.

Then in late October Ben took a shot at Q-school.

The PGA Tour’s Qualifying Tournament is one of the most difficult golfing events in the world. Play is conducted in three stages, spread over six weeks. The first two stages consist of four rounds of 18 holes each, with roughly 25% of the field advancing. The final stage is six rounds long. Only golfers tied for 25th place or above earn a tour card.

Getting through Q-school just six months after turning pro was a long shot. The competition is brutal—not just top mini tour guys but Nationwide players and plenty of PGA Tour veterans as well. But Ben ignited. He finished the first stage tied for 11th, the second tied for third and the final stage tied for second.

Ben was going to the big leagues. And he was in for some major adjustments.

“THE ONLY THING I WASN’T really prepared for was the amount of golf and travel that you do on the PGA Tour,” Ben says. “It’s something I don’t think you can prepare for. It’s just something that you get used to.”

In 2011 Martin would spend 27 weeks on the road, sometimes leaving his home for more than a month at a stretch. It was isolating. He mostly traveled alone, without his girlfriend or even a regular caddie (he would go through four in his rookie year). The average PGA Tour pro is 35 years old. Ben was 23 for most of his first season.

“One of the hardest things is that I’m one of the first guys my age to make it out here,” he says. “Most of my buddies are still playing the mini tours. And there have been some weeks where I’ve thought it might be fun to go back and play tournaments with them, even though they are playing events where the winner makes $30,000.”

The stress of a relentless travel schedule was also wearing on Ben. Even though he was visiting many of the cities on the tour for the first time, in most places he saw little more than the golf course, the hotel and the airport.

“The worst was New Orleans. I’d played three weeks in a row. I’m on the road. I didn’t even want to play that week. I’d rather have been home,” he continues. “I was playing badly, and I was by myself. It can get old. But then I think, ‘Well, what else? What could be better than doing this?’”

Ben is far from alone. Self-doubt, homesickness and loneliness are common symptoms of life on the PGA Tour, particularly for younger players. “Professional golf is not all glamorous and easy. I mean, it’s great when you are having success out there. It really, really is. But if you are not? It’s a really tough lifestyle,” agent Elliott adds. “Nobody knows about how much time these guys spend in airports and how much time they spend away from friends, their ­girlfriends and their families. It’s like a traveling circus in many ways.”

Photo: Brad DeCecco

IN THE END, TIED FOR EIGHTH was the highest Ben would climb on the McGladrey Classic’s leaderboard. He would go on to bogey the next three holes and barely survive the cut. On the final day of play he posted a 78, eight above par, a shockingly bad score for a touring pro. It’s almost as if he were un­con­sciously sabotaging himself. His four-day cumulative performance was good only for 68th place and an $8,160 check.

He played better in Orlando the ­following week, tying for 20th at the Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals Classic and making $47,411. But the combined results tallied up to just $340,080 on the 2011 money list, 187th place. Ben failed to make it past the second stage of Q-school. He will be competing on the Nationwide Tour in 2012.

“The PGA Tour makes it as hard as possible for you to keep your card your first year,” says Elliott. “You don’t get to play as many practice rounds, you aren’t used to the travel, and you don’t know the golf courses. It’s all new. Then add to that someone like Ben, who has never even played a full year of professional golf. The whole deck is stacked against a guy who comes out of college and gets his tour card.”

Ben seems almost relieved. “Sure, I was disappointed not to keep my tour card. But at the same time I was happy to have a month and a half away from golf. Had I made it back onto the PGA Tour, I would have been back to playing golf almost immediately. It’s easy to get burned out when you are playing with guys of that caliber. I’m happy to be playing on the Nationwide.”

He will enter at least 25 tournaments this year. The goal, always, is to make it back on the big boy tour in 2013. Only the top 25 golfers on the Nationwide’s money list will earn their cards. Ben’s first stop is in Bogotá, Colombia.